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Posts Tagged ‘ business models ’

I’ve been critical of Google on this blog. I’ve been critical of Apple, and others too. These companies deserve praise for what they have done. But that shouldn’t give them a free pass forever. I take grief for bashing Google (nobody seems to mind when I bash Apple). But I wanted to take a moment…

It’s been over 4 years since PhoneGnome’s initial release. It has evolved a great deal over that time and I’ve learned a lot. Over on the PhoneGnome blog, we look at where it is, and where to go from here: http://www.phonegnome.com/blog/2009/12/02/phonegnome-participatory-marketing-challenge/

This needs a lot more work, but since time is short, I may never get around to it, so here I provide the less than fully formed version. Om Malik today posted about the woes of a silicon valley VoIP startup that launched with much fanfare last year. In this post, Om says: the company…

Andy Abramson refers us to Dean Bubley’s post on Pudding Media and Ike Elliott’s post on Free is Not a model and says: [it] pretty much sums up what I’ve been saying for years on Ken Radio..about the “If It’s Free It’s Me, If I Gotta Pay It’s No Way” crowd. While on the one…

Jaxtr also seems to be another of these companies where the math just doesn’t work and one has to wonder on what basis they raised money and (supposedly) have received acquisition offers. According to Tech Untangled, they are signing up 16,000 accounts per day. That is pretty impressive, for sure (if true – and nobody…

In a survey of 13,000 homes, Mediamark Research found that 14 percent of homes had only a cell phone and no landline, whereas only 12.3 percent had a landline and no cell-phone. Based on the comments around the net on this survey, it’s clear the trend is age biased, something confirmed by analyst Andy Arthur…

While the Verizon patent situation may be an accellerator (perhaps a very rapid one, if an injunction denying Vonage the ability to add customers comes down in the decision due April 24), it is my belief that Vonage’s problems go deeper than this litigation, and I’ve been saying as much for several years, at least…

Andy says Vonage’s best move is a sale. That may be true, from Vonage’s perspective, but let’s look at the numbers. At a stock price of around $3/share, the market cap of the company is roughly $500MM, or about the same as the cash they have in the bank. At that point, $750MM looks like…

Alec Saunders revisits the state of Voice 2.0 in a response to a post by Jim Van Meggelen regarding the lack of integration between PBX�s and carriers. At a recent telephony conference, we saw many telcos reporting about the progress on their open platform initiatives and how there was this glorious future for us all…

I’m often asked “why does it cost so much for Vonage to acquire a customer?” The simple answer is that the demand is just not there. At the end of the day, they are selling something people don’t really want or need very badly. Us VoIP geeks assumed “if we build it, they will come.”…